Can new biomes be created by the community?

Discussion in 'Mapping and stuff' started by Zenotheory, July 7, 2015.

  1. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    well the conversion with textures is going without problems. I can adjust every current biome texture I want. However when I want to convert my fbx I run into trouble.

    D:\Steam\SteamApps\common\Planetary Annihilation\media\pa\terrain\lava\fbx\lava_volcano_04_diffuse.png: could not load: can't fopen

    (for the sake of.. I renamed all textures and fbx of my crystal the same as what is currently used, in this case Lava Volcano 04)

    I'm at a loss here..
  2. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    Not sure, I might make a "how to" on making custom CSG and using papatrans and adding it to the CSG list when I have some free time, currently all my free time is in use on another project outside of PA.
  3. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    Just so you know too,
    I have successfully added custom CSG without replacing existing CSG, and it works..
    But this was over a year ago and I no longer have the original work I did, so I have to redo everything again..

    I'm sure there was a thread of mine somewhere with a demo of me adding houses to planets as part of my "Abandoned Cities" Biome idea from last year..


    Edit..
    All my work and models were lost in a tragic SSD failure...
    The joys of SSD's
  4. Alpha2546

    Alpha2546 Post Master General

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    Hmm I see. I was quoting that because of the settings file but I can't find it for terrain stuff in the folders so I guess its still useless.
    We'd love something like that here. Some people came and said kinda the same but always left before they could unfold the pa secrets unfortunately.
  5. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    Give us your secrets SENPAI! Let us make our great Crystal Biomes, City Biomes, Cartoon Biomes and every other biome that comes to mind :D
  6. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    It will take me a while to work it out again, I remember some stuff but most of it was trail and error workings.
    If I hadn't lost all the work id done (curse me for not using github back then) id be able to write up a "how to" a lot faster.
    Hopefully I'll have the work I'm doing now completed within the next few months, then I can get back to working on PA mods.
    I've had to put all my modding on hold until I finish what I'm working on unfortunately..
    stuart98 likes this.
  7. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    stuart98 likes this.
  8. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    Interesting read for sure.. To bad it's stuff I already know :p To issue I have is that the model has an assigned texture.
    This could mean 2 things.

    1. I didn't convert right and need additional steps before it works.
    2. I need to remove every material from maya so no material is linked to the mesh and the PA engine automaticaly assigns the textures with the same name.
  9. killerkiwijuice

    killerkiwijuice Post Master General

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    maxpowerz likes this.
  10. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    To be fair, I only got as far as adding grey-box models and CSG,
    I wasn't worrying about the texturing side of things at the time as that stuff usually isn't to hard to work out once you have the models and csg showing in game.

    I'm sure you should be able to assign/link to the texture in the .json file that handles the CSG.
  11. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    Well I sort of got it in the game.. However the mesh was completely transparant and was 90 degrees on its side..
  12. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    Invert your normals, sounds like the model had flipped the normals on export makng all your veritices face inward.

    Edit..
    Fixed my jibberish
    Last edited: August 12, 2015
  13. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    And don't forget to convert from Quads to Trish before export..
  14. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    So I did a couple of things..

    1. Went from Yaxis up to Zaxis up in maya
    2. Made it a shitton bigger in maya
    3. Applied standard lambert

    [​IMG]

    As you can see the model is:
    1. Still on its side.
    2. 100% transparant
    3. Still extremely small (the 4 blue dots in the middle are its original size) In maya I work in Meters. #bgolus do you know whats going wrong and how can I attach my own textures?
    cdrkf likes this.
  15. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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  16. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    With the orientation of your object that has me completely stumped..
    Afaik it should be the same orientation in game as it is in the 3d scene your editing it in.
    Why it's rotating 90 on it's side is beyond me.
    I could always install Maya again and have a fiddle when I have the free time and see if I can assist you.
  17. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    Reversed normals issn't the problem checked that and normals are fine. About the rotation i'm surprized aswell. I tried both Yaxis up and Zaxis up and with both they came out sideways.

    there is however some issue with transparency I can see in maya. When I select the object I can see every wireframe (meaning something is transparant and is causing the issue I see in game) just need to figure out what it is and what hotkey I pressed to do that lol.
    maxpowerz likes this.
  18. killerkiwijuice

    killerkiwijuice Post Master General

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    I don't know if Maya is a good program to use for trying to implement stuff into PA. The devs use 3ds Max and so do I. I have no issues now that I learned it.
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  19. maxpowerz

    maxpowerz Post Master General

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    If you want I can try exporting your object in blender and or 3DsMax if you pass me the original model.
    And then I'll pass it back and you can see if that works

    Or you could install blender and try for yourself.
    Blenders filmbox support is a bit hit n miss tho.
  20. rivii

    rivii Well-Known Member

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    really doesn't matter.. I know how to use both 3ds max aswell as maya pretty darn good (just happend to come across an issue most likely related to an ,for me, unknown hotkey combo. With both programs you export as fbx for pretty much all game engines. Unreal, UDK, Unity, etc. The thing is that as modders you don't have full control over the materials used in the PA engine. and thus you can only hope that you do it right and when you don't, its trial and error or @bgolus comes along and helps us out :D

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